Sainshand to Ulaan Bataar Train #289

Leaving the Gobi ger camp, we headed back to Sainshand to catch the train to Ulan Bataar. Sainshand is not the prettiest of towns, and once we poked around the two museums that the town boasts, that was that! One of the museums told the story of how a brave buddhist devotee hid spiritual treasures from the cleansing might of Russian atheism  from the 1920’s to the advent of democracy in the 90’s. The other museum told the history of Sainshand from the time of the dinosaurs to the present day. During our visit there was a power cut, so we took the rest of the tour by torchlight, eerie stuffed camels and caveman mannequins looming out of the dark!

We got on the train at 7:30pm for an 8pm departure. This train was very old, but clean- a samovar boiler at one end of the carriage and another of Ghenghis Khan’s female descendants as our carriage mistress. The air conditioning whilst heading through the Gobi was a window that opened stiffly. A Mongolian family was singing a farewell song and  dancing in a group huddle on the platform; it sounded very forlorn. The train set off and the sun set in a blaze of golden fire. We put the children on the bottom bunks as there was no rail to stop Harry tumbling down in the night. The open window blew a dry desert wind on to my face. As soon as it was dark, an electrical storm of epic proportions began. Lightning stabbing down from one end of the horizon to the other, sometimes arcing back up into the clouds without striking the ground. Weirdly, there was no sound of thunder. At about 1am we passed through rain and I felt large drops of rain hit my face. I wrestled with the window and just about wedged it shut.

We woke at 6am as we had heard the toilets were locked an hour before arrival in UB for some reason. We made some porridge and watched the new greener landscape unfold out of the window. Every now and then we passed a group of gers and then the suburbs of Ulaan Bataar. We had been promised no Starbucks or Maccy D’s in UB, so you can imagine our surprise and horror when Maisie spied a sign for IKEA! IKEA in Mongolia! Is nothing sacred? Do they still have bookcases called Billy and tables called Sven, or are they instead named Ghenghis and Kublai? We shall probably never find out...